Tuesday, 08 July 2014

Found it in a Field Book: World War II Zoo Conditions

William M. Mann (1886-1960) began his scientific work as an entomologist and was employed by the Bureau of Entomology, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 1916-1925. He is perhaps best known for his work as the fifth Superintendent of the National Zoological Park, 1925-1956. During his years with the National Zoo, Mann worked on the Zoo’s building program and took part in several well publicized expeditions to collect live animals in order to increase the zoo population. Some of these collecting trips were during the years of World War II.

The effects of military conflicts are not often explicitly stated in the field books, though we have come across a few. Mann’s Diary for 1940 is one such document. The diary primarily describes his work and travel during the Smithsonian-Firestone Expedition to Liberia, but also includes a folded insert. It is a 3 page letter to "Campbell c/o R.H. Weesner Jr" detailing 1939 conditions of zoos in United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, specifically noting damage from the on-going war.

The Field Book Project is an initiative to increase accessibility to field book content that documents natural history. Through ongoing partnerships within and beyond the Smithsonian Institution, the Project is making field books easier to find and available in a digital format for current research, as well as inspiring new ways of utilizing these rich information resources.